Response to Jason's comment on Shock Tea

This is in direct response to Jason's post. Kyle, it's not like I don't want to respond to yours. It's just that by Chapter 2, all will be cleared up. If you're feeling unsettled and confused, that's normal, as long as you are also compelled to read the next paragraph. In any case, Jason wrote:

Brian, I notice that you use dashes, rather than quotation marks, to show dialogue. Is this a stream-of-consciousness thing? How do you see it shaping the reader's experience of your novel?

So...first off, not stream-of-consciousness. The problem with Shock T, a problem I've attempted to put into the novel, is that it seems stream-of-consciousness in many parts, but during those parts one has to wonder who's consciousness is supposedly streaming. It's not Bobby's. It's not Slam's. At this point in the story, who else is there. If it's anybody's it's the quasi-omniscient narrator, but the narrator is supposed to seem disembodied from the story, in many cases (H)he, (S)she, (I)it is multiple in personalities. In some cases, the narrator is susceptible to the same delusions as the characters, and in other cases H/S/I is immune. So, I think we have a problem defining this as a stream of consciousness.

I think what I was going for instead was more a concept of stream of reality, which is less pretentious than it sounds. The most common narrative structure in Shock Tea is that of a camera simply moving through the action of the story, so that it records everything the way that old German film makers used to record "a day in the life of a street" movies back in the twenties, but its presence has trouble focussing. This camera, however, is an improved version of its cinematic cousin. It's recording internal states, sometimes the internal states of an entire culture. In fact, that is the horror in Shock T, that the characters are programmed by their culture and to get inside their heads is to see that vast network and be overwhelmed by it. Thus internal states always seem to be madness, or are re-rendered into myth. I don't want to say to much on that subject, since it is a great deal of the driving force of the story.

There is also, of course, the narrator viewpoint who is convinced that this is a story, that it has to be a story, because if the lives of these people are not a story then what are they? What is the point of life? Thus, with the power of an omnisient narrator, he attempts to force Shock T into the mold of a story with varying success. This is the guy who needs the First for the story to start.

But it is the providence of the near catatonic camera simply recording the action that is in question, because it is from this narrative view that quotes are replaced by dashes. Also, you may have noticed, the language becomes extraordinarilly passive. These are things that happen. These are things that are being recorded, recorded without commentary except when the camera slips into the grand network of socially constructed internal states, but here again, internal to whom?

So, imagine this camera sitting in the middle of the room while a conversation is going on. It does not move. If something is said off camera, then someone later watching the film does not know who said what except by their tone, whether they are initiating conversation or responding, and what they say. Let us say that the conversation happens on camera. There are no close-ups. No switching between the characters as the conversation volleys back and forth. The noise and the meanings are produced without any posturing to supply commentary. It's not that the meanings are lost. They may be explored ad nauseam. But they are not commented on. This is a world where villains and heroes are not readilly apparent. Good and evil still exist, but there is no one to tell you one from the other. If you need that delineation, it's your job to provide it.

A quote mark not only tells you that someone is saying something but it puts an authoritative stamp on the statement. "Hello," the operator said. Who said? The operator. The dash does not supply that authority. -Hello- Who said that? It's impossible to tell without searching the context. Who are they talking to? Did they say, "hello," in response, or are they starting something. Maybe they are talking to themselves. Nothing is particularly clear, except that noise was made. Whether or not it meant something is not a function of the noise, but the environment in which the noise was made.

Two other features bear mentioning in relation to the dash. First of all, it's more action oriented than the quote. There is no ,______ said to slow down the action of speaking, and I am a big believer in keeping the tempo of the language paced with the action it represents. Second, by not using ,_____ said, I am forced to make the conversations meaningful enough to point out who the speaker is. At times, this is particularly confusing, and at those times, I have endeavored to provide more clues, like saids, or whispers, or screams. Whatever.

In any case, I hope this answers that round of questions concerning the Shock T.
Actually, one last thing. The - works pretty much the same as the " in terms of continuity. Thus a missing dash at the end of a paragraph, still means that the next block of text is the same speaker. But, I'm sure you've all figured that out by now.